The Physician’s Guide

By Dr. Nicholas Nissen

Combining the experience of an Ivy-League-trained physician with the insight of a former Assistant Dean of Medical School Admissions, The Physician's Guide is the modern guide to pre-med success. From high school to college to gap years, The Physician's Guide will detail proven strategies to succeed and thrive as a pre-medical student. This book discusses the critical topics, like MCAT prep, personal statement writing, and performing well in admissions interviews. However, it also covers less discussed, but equally important topics, such as extracurricular activities, finding mentors, studying abroad, research, and so much more. This book not only shows you how to be eligible for medical school; it teaches you how to stand out to admissions committees by following your passions and enjoying your pre-medical years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indies United Publishing House, LLC
• Release date: May 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644561058

Dr. Nicholas Nissen

Dr. Nicholas J. Nissen, M.D. is an American physician, speaker, and author. He is a practicing clinician, the Chief Content Officer at Med School Mastery, and author of The Physician’s Guide, a book on medical school admissions strategy for pre-medical students. He presents on topics ranging from medical school admissions to mental health and the biomedical sciences. He and his wife live in Boston, Massachusetts.

Book preview

Copyright © by Nicholas Nissen

First Edition published May 2020

Published by Indies United Publishing House, LLC

All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form without the prior written consent of the author/publisher or the terms relayed to you herein.

ISBN-13: 978-1-64456-105-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932238

www.indiesunited.net

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Entering College

Your Premed Timeline

The Premed Years

Checking Boxes

The Core Competencies of a Physician

Diversity

Experiences

Majors, Clubs, and Activities

Research

Mentors

The MCAT

Format

Creating a Schedule

Gap Year(s)?

To gap year or not to gap year?

Possible Gap Year Activities

Application Time

Find your Recommenders

Finalize your List of Medical Schools

The Personal Statement

The AMCAS

Secondary Applications

Receiving Interviews

Ace your Interviews!

Receiving Offers and Choosing your Program

Pre-Med Life Hacks

Index

Introduction

Pre-meds agonize over their studies, and still, 60% of them do­n’t get accepted into medical school. This guide is designed to show you how to enjoy your life and prepare to be an outstanding physician while also getting accepted into medical school.

The Physician’s Guide will show you a fresh approach to pre-med strategy. Medical school preparation doesn’t have to dominate your entire college experience and dictate how you live your life. This program will remove the stress surrounding the process and give you the tools to maximize your quality of life and career outlook.

Over the course of the next few hours, you are going to get all of the best insider tips for building yourself into a truly unique applicant for medical school. We guarantee that you’ll find important advice in this guide that you’ve never heard before. Your pre-med peers don’t know many of these strategies. Your academic advisors may not even know these strategies. The medical education process has changed dramatically in the past years and many are unaware of how the game has changed. This guide will show you how.

As you know, admission into medical school is a challenging task, and only ~40% of medical school applicants are accepted into a medical school. What are you going to do so you don’t fall into that 60% majority? The true secret is that most of those 60% of students probably didn’t make many big mistakes, were probably good students, most likely studied hard for their exams and the MCAT and asked for all of their letters of recommendation. So why weren’t they accepted? It’s because they didn’t stand out.

Think about this right now: whom are some pre-meds that I know? What are they like? What are their extracurricular experiences and their academic numbers like? What do their resumes look like? And now, more importantly, how am I different?

How are my experiences different from theirs?

Have I done anything that the admissions committee has never seen before?

How can I surprise the admissions committee?

This is the kind of thinking that we will do throughout the rest of the guide.

Be advised: this guide is going to share some very unconventional viewpoints which give you maximum career output for minimum stress input. It is meant to be brief, efficient, and practical for your use, and hopefully, not distracting you too much from your normal responsibilities. It covers all of the steps from high school to choosing a medical school, while including critical information about current trends in admissions and the MCAT. We encourage you to dedicate some focused time to this reading and complete the reflections after each section so you can emerge from this experience with your own pre-med roadmap to success.

As medical professionals, we understand that preparation for medical school can be a heavy, almost-unbearable burden for many people. We don’t want that. We don’t want for you to sacrifice your life for a future in medicine. We want for you to enrich your life in your journey towards becoming a physician.

From today on, you’re going to be able to build yourself into not just another applicant, but rather, that applicant: the one that they are excited to interview, the interesting one that they can’t wait to talk to. You are going to stand out.

Let’s begin.

Summary:

► This program is meant to show you the best ways to stand out for medical school admission in the modern era.

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